Improv Planet

Logical, insightful, motivational, comprehensive, and practical. Another winning course from John J. Mortensen. Keep them coming!

I very much enjoyed this course of lectures, giving an overview and examples of historical improvisation through the ages, and advocating for its reintroduction to modern pedagogy. One of my biggest takeaways from this course, is that there are more resources available than I had known about before, and I was made aware of even more performers who share their performances with the world. Well worth the time investment! Thank you, Darren Shearer

Save tens of thousands in academic fees by watching this course first... no joke

As a musician who plays 3 instruments, one being piano, I still remember how years ago I decided to learn piano. On my own. The first piece I chose was Mozart's Turkish Rondo' ! BIG MISTAKE. I have no idea how, but I learned to play decently the piece until the final section. Long story short, I never managed to learn the section, until years later. Even when taking piano lessons whenever I could, from fine concert pianists, they never said much about technique. The one question always buzzing in my mind was: "How the heck to EXACTLY play this section"? Instead, most of the time I was hearing the same old boring stuff about playing piano here, forte there, crescendo this and diminuendo that, i.e. interpretation. I am sure that if I had this course then, I would have saved myself several wasted years. And I can still learn much now. Other than that, is there ANY course or book by Dr. Mortensen that isn't worth having? Grab this course TODAY.

Exzellent Staff and brillant Teaching. No doubt a milestone in music education to forget the tyranny of playing the repertoire again and again and loose joy on classical music.

I frankly bought all the courses by Dr. Mortensen, they are amazing! I wonder what someone like Valentina Lisitsa would be able to do with such a course! But even if I'll never be Lisitsa, these courses are truly mind opening, there's nothing else like that around and frankly every other piano course I see on known websites by top educators, are starting to look tired compared to the extremely interesting system taught by Dr. Mortensen. And this was the very same system that top notch musicians were learning a long time ago. This amazingly interesting world must be rescued from the obscurity and oblivion it was falling into, which is exactly what these courses do. I mean, wasn't that Martini guy the same teacher who taught MOZART? It can't be a coincidence that 200 years ago music teachers were creating master musicians, and today either mediocre ones, or at best, competent or highly competent PERFORMERS. I still remember how when I wanted to be a musician was to create my own music, not playing music by others. Again, it is always edifying to learn a new Bach piece, but I think it is limiting, and BORING, to play only music written by others!

This course is perfect in every way. I have been playing pieces from the repertoire for years and was beginning to get bored of it, but this course has rekindled my love for piano and keyboard music. I was a complete beginner to improvising, but after the course, it felt easy. It also gets you used to the structure of music which makes memorising pieces from the repertoire much faster and easier. Highly recommend!

I especially liked the "helping drowning friends" metaphor.

Logical, insightful, motivational, comprehensive, and practical. Another winning course from John J. Mortensen. Keep them coming!